Pro-Western official killed in car bombing

Saturday

Dec 28, 2013 at 12:01 AMDec 28, 2013 at 3:10 PM

BEIRUT - A powerful car bomb killed a prominent Lebanese politician critical of Syria and its ally Hezbollah, hitting his SUV yesterday as it was being driven through a ritzy business district near Beirut's waterfront.

BEIRUT — A powerful car bomb killed a prominent Lebanese politician critical of Syria and its ally Hezbollah, hitting his SUV yesterday as it was being driven through a ritzy business district near Beirut’s waterfront.

Allies of the slain politician, former Finance Minister Mohammed Chatah, indirectly blamed the Shiite Hezbollah group for the bombing, raising tensions between Lebanon’s two main political camps at a time when the country’s factions already are deeply at odds over the civil war in neighboring Syria.

The morning explosion echoed across Beirut and threw a pillar of black smoke above the city’s skyline. The force of the blast punched a nearly 2-yard-wide crater in the street, set at least three cars on fire and shattered windows in office buildings and apartment towers up to a block away.

The 62-year-old Chatah, who also had been a Lebanese ambassador to the United States and a senior aide to ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri, was killed along with his driver and four others, the National News Agency reported. The Health Ministry said at least 70 people were wounded.

In a statement, the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the attack and “ reiterated their unequivocal condemnation of any attempt to destabilize Lebanon through political assassinations.”

The bombing deepened the sense of malaise in Lebanon, which is struggling to cope with the fallout from the civil war in Syria, including the influx of more than 1 million Syrians who have sought refuge from the violence in their homeland.

Lebanon has had only a weak caretaker government since April, with the two main political blocs unable or unwilling to reach a compromise to form a new cabinet.

Hariri, a Sunni, heads the main, Western-backed coalition in Lebanon, known as the March 14 alliance. Hezbollah, which enjoys the support of Syria and Iran and commands a militia stronger than the national military, leads those on the other side of Lebanon’s political divide.

No group quickly claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack, but it was reminiscent of assassinations of about a dozen members of the anti-Syrian Hariri camp from 2004 through 2008.

The most dramatic of those was the suicide bombing in 2005 in Beirut — about four blocks from the site of yesterday’s explosion — that killed Hariri’s father, Rafik Hariri, also a former prime minister. Hariri’s allies accused Syria of being behind the killings, a claim Damascus denied.

The opening session in the Hariri assassination trial is scheduled in less than three weeks in The Hague, Netherlands, where the U.N.-backed tribunal investigating his killing is based.

Five Hezbollah members have been indicted for their alleged involvement in the assassination. Hezbollah rejects the accusations and has refused to hand the men over.

The Shiite group’s overt role in Syria has inflamed Lebanon’s simmering sectarian tensions. A wave of violence that has washed across the country this year has fueled predictions that Lebanon, which still is recovering from its own 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, is on the brink of slipping back into full-blown sectarian conflict.

In recent months, a series of explosions have struck districts dominated by Hezbollah, apparently in retaliation for the group’s decision to dispatch its fighters to Syria, while a deadly twin car bombing hit the northern city of Tripoli, a Sunni stronghold.

Chatah’s death marks a serious loss for the pro-Western camp in Lebanon.

He was a prominent economist who once worked at the International Monetary Fund in the United States and later served Lebanon as ambassador to the United States. He was one of the closest aides to Rafik Hariri. He later served as finance minister when Saad Hariri took over the premiership, and stayed on as his senior adviser after he lost the post in 2011.

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry condemned yesterday’s bombing, calling it an “ abhorrent terrorist attack” and describing Chatah as “a voice of reason, responsibility and moderation.”

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